Month: May 2004

Categories
Opinion

Cape Dear

At the tail end of our honeymoon, Gina and I found ourselves at the tail end of Africa with nowhere else to go. We were going over some of the highlights of the previous months with travel buddies while we sat in Mama Africa, a funky ethnic restaurant in Cape Town. We listened to an absolutely incredible marimba band and we drank Amarula, a creamy liquor made from marula fruits. Soon we stopped talking because it was time to dance, and it got wild in there. We realized we needed to work out a way to stay in this far-out place.

I found a job the following day teaching at a school in Constantia. Constantia is a posh suburb of Cape Town where Nelson Mandela, LaToya Jackson, Desmond Tutu, and Margaret Thatcher (among others) have beautiful homes. Thatcher’s grandson is in my geometry class.

It is stunning here, and as I sit gazing out my classroom window, I see the setting sun blaze over the distant hills just above Elephants Eye Mountain. The colors will go mad in a few seconds.

Constantia is a beautiful place indeed, but it is in stark contrast to other places just minutes away. The first informal settlement most visitors see upon leaving the airport is Langa, a sprawling network of closely huddled and vibrantly decorated shacks loomed over by two giant cooling towers (resembling the ones on The Simpsons or at Three Mile Island).These settlements are part of the townships and are a legacy of the apartheid era.

Nearby is Khayelitsha, one of South Africa’s largest townships and home to more than one million residents. If you increased the population density of Memphis by 45 percent, that would be the density of Khayelitsha. The majority of the people there are Xhosa and speak in a language marked by clicking sounds. More than two-thirds of the 45 million people in South Africa are black, made up of Xhosa, Zulu, and Sotho groups, among others. These groups banded together in 1912 and formed the African National Congress but remained without basic human rights under the rule of the white settlers from Holland and Great Britain until apartheid ended in 1994.

Nelson Mandela was elected the first black president of South Africa. That makes 2004 a special time, the 10-year anniversary of freedom for blacks in South Africa. They succeeded bravely in a long struggle, and now this country is ready for growth and diversity. With the dark shadow of apartheid lifted, South Africa is blossoming with possibilities. The currency is steadily strengthening against the dollar, and last year South African real estate increased in value more than any other country in the world.

Where else but Cape Town can you spot wildebeest and zebra grazing along a mountainside and then drive 15 minutes to some of the world’s greatest surfing beaches to watch whales breaching off shore? They name their winds here (that’s how cool this place is), and the surfers take it seriously. The famous “Cape Doctor” is a bracing summertime southeasterly wind that causes a strange mop of clouds to sit on Table Mountain, accessible by foot or cable car. On top of Table Mountain is a strange vegetation called fynbos, the world’s smallest floral kingdom. There is also dassie, which look like giant rats, but oddly enough are most closely related to the elephant.

Last year, Gina and I went to Kruger National Park, an area about the size of Rhode Island, to see the lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos, and the many varieties of antelope. And this year we camped in the Kalahari Desert where we saw many more lions in the wild, the world’s largest birds, and meerkats too.

Just the other day, Gina and I were on our way for a weekend trip to visit the penguin colony at Boulder’s Beach nearby, and we stopped to return a video. A large mix of people were crowded there watching the television as it was announced that the 2010 World Cup will be held here. You should have seen the people cheer and jump for joy. When we walked out of the place and got in our car, we noticed everyone was swerving back and forth, honking their horns and flashing their lights in celebration. It was a little scary but touching to witness this display and feel the hopeful spirit of this burgeoning country unified by this honor.

On the random now: Public transportation here is not very good. People cram into small vans. It’s better to try to get a car. Strangely, no one pumps their own gas. It is done for you to create jobs. The candy is amazing, probably because of the Dutch influence. They are one-fifteenth of the population and speak Afrikaans, which is to Dutch as Old English would be to English. No Mexican food. Instead, they have Portuguese. Peri-peri is hot stuff! Everyone runs around barefoot (even at banks and in fancy shopping malls). The health care is excellent, with some of the world’s greatest doctors. (Remember, this is the home of the first successful heart transplant.) The weather is a little like San Diego and helps to yield grapes the size of golf balls. There are baboons too, always getting up to mischief. And I’m still talking about Cape Town. That is just one tiny part of South Africa.

The long and short of it is that this is a sophisticated, forward-thinking, socially and environmentally conscious place with a booming economy and infinite options for fun and exciting ways of life, people to meet, places to visit, nature to experience, and things to do. We’re livin’ the good life here.

Come visit. There is room for everyone. n

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Editorial

“Cautious but dubious” is a fair description of the reaction of Memphis City Schools superintendent Carol Johnson to U.S. senator Lamar Alexander’s new proposal for $500 “Pell Grants” for middle- and low-income families with school-age children. And it’s a fair description of our reaction as well.

The grants, modeled after the Pell Grants now awarded college students, would follow a child from school to school — which is to say, from public school to private school to religious-oriented institution or wherever the child’s parents preferred. “I need to know more,” said Johnson after hearing Alexander pitch his proposal at a meeting of the Memphis Rotary Club Tuesday. But, she said, “A lot of people would tend to see that as a Trojan horse, unfriendly to public schools.”

Senator Alexander has in some ways been an independent voice in the Senate, willing to depart from Republican orthodoxy on matters ranging from No Child Left Behind to the question of whether states should be allowed to levy Internet taxes. But the senator seems to us somewhat off the mark with his child-grant proposal. First, what he calls “Pell Grants” is the same old school-voucher proposal by the back door: public money used to compete with public education. Secondly, it makes no sense to give President Bush a blank check in Iraq and pretend that there will be what Alexander calls “new money” left over.

We can’t give this proposal — as presently configured, anyhow — a passing mark. n

Categories
News The Fly-By

Eating, Moving, and Tuning

Pediatrician Beth Andrew has always enjoyed working with children because she likes taking care of healthy individuals. Unfortunately, though her preference hasn’t changed, the number of healthy children has.

“Until recently, I was not used to seeing children with health problems associated with a sedentary lifestyle,” she said at the official kickoff this week of the Tennessee Healthy Weight Network’s plan, “Eat Smart, Move More, Tune In.” Developed over the past two years, the plan hopes to promote a healthier lifestyle for Tennessee children by changing cultural norms about health.

Figures from the Centers for Disease Control show that, since 1980, the number of overweight adolescents has tripled. More than 20 percent of Tennessee children are currently overweight and early figures show many more to be at risk.

The figures have disturbing health-care implications: Type 2 diabetes, closely tied to obesity and once almost never seen in children, is increasing among youth. At the kickoff, a dietitian even mentioned that this generation of children might not have the life expectancy their parents did.

“One thing that was evident from the start was that this did not happen overnight or from one cause,” said Marian Levy, associate director of health promotion and grants management with the Children’s Foundation Research Center. She said increased use of technology, a decrease in the time allotted for physical education in schools, and more dangerous neighborhoods all contributed to the problem.

The plan includes recommendations for schools, faith-based organizations, and families. For instance, the plan recommends schools use fund-raisers like dance marathons or fruit sales rather than selling candy. For families, it encourages parents to plan physical activities they can do together and to limit TV and video time.

“It’s really up to the parents,” said Levy. “The parents are the ones who are going to the grocery stores and buying the food. They set the atmosphere.” n

E-mail: cashiola@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Music Music Features

Music

Last week, The Bo-Keys took their Stax– and Hi-infused soul show on the road: They played three shows in New York (Piano’s and B.B. King’s Blues Club in Manhattan and the infamous Frank’s Cocktail Lounge in Brooklyn), a gig in Philadelphia (Zanzibar Blue), and a performance on independent FM station WFMU, then squeezed in an interview for The House of Blues Radio Hour — all in just four days.

Touring by plane, trains, subways, and cabs wasn’t easy, but the six-man band — leader/bassist Scott Bomar, guitarist Skip Pitts, drummer Willie Hall, saxophonist Jim Spake, trumpeter Marc Franklin, and organist Charlie Wood, the Bo-Keys’ newest addition — made the most of it, managing to check out tourist spots like Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff‘s True Sound of Philadelphia recording studio (where the Philly Sound — The O’Jays, The Spinners, etc. — was born) and Junior’s, a famous soul-food restaurant in Brooklyn.

At Zanzibar Blue, the Bo-Keys wowed the crowd — which included NPR‘s Amy Salit, producer of the Fresh Air radio program — with their laid-back rendition of “Ellie’s Love Theme,“ from the Shaft soundtrack. “That’s always been a sentimental piece for me,” remarked Pitts — who, along with Hall, played on the original version of the tune, recorded in 1971 by Isaac Hayes.

“It’s the kind of song that makes you want to make babies, not take babies,” Pitts continued. “A lot of rap music is about killing, but soul music is about creating life.”

A veteran of groups such as The Surgeons (“We billed ourselves as ‘The Doctors of Sound,'” Pitts said) and The Midnight Movers, Pitts served as Gene Chandler‘s bandleader when he was just 17 years old. And, although he’s played Memphis soul behind Hayes for the last 35 years, Pitts claimed that the Bo-Keys are something special.

“This tour has taken me back to my early years,” Pitts enthused. “We’re right up the alley of groups like Booker T. & the MGs and The Mar-Keys, and, playing these clubs, it’s almost like having the Stax revue back on the road.”

It ain’t New York, but Shawn Cripps is taking his group, The Limes, to Madison Avenue for a record-release party Saturday, May 29th. Sorry, folks. He’s still not celebrating the release of his long-awaited Easley-McCain recordings. Cripps owes the studio payment for the sessions, so he’s releasing two circa-1991 tracks (“Goddamn You Honeys,“ recorded at Monsieur Jeffrey Evans‘ Tillman Audio Research studio, and “Old Evil River,“ cut at Crosstown Studio) on a seven-inch single instead.

Federico Zanutto of Solid Sex Lovie Doll Records pressed up the vinyl in a limited edition of 300. Previously, the Italian label released singles by The Lost Sounds, The Reatards, and The Knaughty Knights, all favorites on the local punk/garage scene. “I don’t really know how this record came about,” Cripps confessed. “We played in Oxford, and one of The Preacher’s Kids said a few nice things about us. The label started asking around. They contacted Jack [Yarber, who splits drumming duties with Nick Ray in The Limes], who told me they wanted to do a single.”

Meanwhile, you can go to WeAreTheLimes.com to download portions of the Limes’ Easley-McCain session, which was cut last fall. “We were on tour with Mr. Airplane Man, and while we didn’t have enough money to pay off [the studio], we burned copies of the rough mixes and made Xeroxed covers and peddled CDs,” Cripps explained. “[Former Memphian] Chris Grayson bought one and created a Web site for me. I’d explained to him that these aren’t the real songs, but all of a sudden, those rough mixes are [on the Internet] for the world to hear.”

Catch the Limes with The C.C. Riders and The Dutch Masters at Murphy’s Saturday, May 29th.

Producer Jim Dickinson has been busy upgrading his Zebra Ranch recording studio in rural Coldwater, Mississippi. Dickinson has been getting help from Mark Neill, owner of the Soil of the South studio, in Sacramento, California, who also designed ToeRag, the U.K. studio where The White Stripes cut their last album, Elephant.

Dickinson and Neill will be taking part in TapeOp Con 2004, held in New Orleans this weekend. The Portland, Oregon-based magazine’s third annual conference, which is aimed at engineers, producers, studio owners, and home-recording enthusiasts, will feature several panels and workshops, along with performances by groups such as Calexico, Steve Wynn, Vic Chesnutt, and The North Mississippi Allstars. For more information on the conference, go to TapeOp.com. –AL

Music News and Notes: In the Mix, an exhibition of art by and about local musicians, is on display at The Dixon Gallery and Gardens through July 18th. Presented by the Memphis chapter of The Recording Academy, the exhibit features visual, graphic, photographic, and guitar art by regional musicians, among them Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars), Susan Marshall, Gerard Harris, Val Joyner, Cory Branan, Lamar Sorrento, Paul Thorn, Wayne Russell, Jimmy Crosthwait, Sid Selvidge, Jim Dickinson, and Greg Roberson (The Reigning Sound). Non-musician artists such as William Eggleston, Brooke Barnett, and Michael Carpenter are also represented Living Legends, the new album from seminal Memphis rappers 8Ball and MJG debuted at number three on The Billboard 200 album chart this week, the highest-ever debut for a locally connected hip-hop record. Released through Sean “P. Diddy” Combs‘ Bad Boy Records, Living Legends seems to be on its way as the duo’s biggest record yet The 2004 International Songwriting Competition is now accepting submissions. According to an organization press release, $100,000 in prizes will be shared among 50 winners in 16 categories. For more information, check out SongwritingCompetition.com The final round of the Guitar Center‘s “Spin Off” DJ battle is Tuesday, June 1st, at 7 p.m. at the store at 8000 Highway 64. Among local turntablists still in the competition are

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Torture Porn

If you want to get through to the American public, don’t put it in words — put it in pictures. And if you really want the average American to perk up and pay attention, make the pictures about sex. From Janet Jackson’s nipple to Iraqi prisoners’ penises, nothing does it for us like sex.

For two years now, organizations like Human Rights Watch and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have been telling us that George Bush’s imperial drones have been abusing prisoners beyond the limits of the Geneva Conventions. These organizations have long warned that prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo are being humiliated, tortured, and (in some suspect cases) murdered in the name of the war on terror.

The ICRC has issued regular press releases for the past two years about prisoners being deprived of sleep for days, made to endure extremes of cold and heat, exposed to near-drowning, and tied up and forced to contort themselves for hours in positions of agony — all of which adds up to torture by anybody’s standards except, perhaps, those of Donald Rumsfeld.

And for two years, Mr. and Mrs. America have paid no attention. You see, like pre-literate 3-year-olds, Americans need to see the pictures to understand the story.

America’s newspapers and magazines now know their proper role in the media arena: Their role is to tell Tom Brokaw, CNN, and Fox what pictures to show, so at least some small bit of the news can actually get through to the American public. Thank you, Seymour Hersh. Thank you, The New Yorker. Nobody reads what you have to say, but hell, if you can direct Peter Jennings and Bill O’Reilly to the pictures — especially if they’re pictures of piles of naked people with, ooh la la, leering young women in the foreground — we’ll sure as heck look at those.

Because Americans don’t read. And we love both sex and the shame it makes us feel.

My guess is, if the only pictures coming out of Abu Ghraib had shown fully clothed prisoners being threatened by attack dogs or electrodes, the American public would have shrugged the whole thing off by now. But bring sex into those pictures, and we suddenly weep and gnash our teeth in self-loathing. There’s nothing a Puritan loves better than to beat himself up over sex.

What else can you expect from a nation that, on the one hand, has made Internet sex sites the biggest industry on the Web and, on the other, falls into a red-faced faint over JJ’s Superbowl boob?

So perhaps that’s the real reason for our “outrage” over what happened at Abu Ghraib prison: We hate ourselves for loving torture porn. For the American public, what happened in Abu Ghraib is really a sex scandal. You watch: When the pictures of grinning young women in uniform and naked young men in bondage stop coming out, and the story is merely about suffocation, electrocution, and other forms of individualized terror, the American public will turn their attention somewhere else.

If it’s not in pictures and it’s not about sex, we just don’t care.

Are other prisoners, in other places we don’t know about, being tortured by Americans or their proxies? Most Americans will never know, even if Hersh tries to tell us. We can only hope that among the soldiers and intelligence agents “debriefing” those poor souls are a few with their own digital cameras. n

Ed Weathers writes occasionally for the Flyer Web site, MemphisFlyer.com, where a fuller version of this essay is posted.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Music To Your Eyes

T he Dixon Gallery and Gardens joins the “50 Years of Rock and Roll” celebration with a new exhibit, “In the Mix: A New Way To See Art in Music.”

The exhibit, which will be displayed through July 18th, showcases work from local musicians, photographers, and graphic artists.

“The purpose is to further show the connection between art and music,” says Jeniffer Church, guest curator for the show. “The exhibit is mainly composed of artwork by local musicians who are very talented, even though it is not what they do primarily, and there are some examples of the art created around music.

“In Memphis, the communities are all connected,” says Church. “Artists and musicians share so many struggles and challenges. It’s nice to see that the two work together so harmoniously.”

The collection in the Mallory Gallery is small — about 25 pieces.

“This is by no means a comprehensive show,” says Church. “It is a brief exhibit giving you a glance at the talent that is here in our own backyard. One of the interesting aspects of this exhibit is that it is the first time for many of these artists to show their work.”

That artists play in bands and musicians paint is not dogs-loving-cats shocking. Creative people, after all, tend to be creative in many ways. “I think it may be a surprise to some, but it’s something that’s very natural,” says Church. “These musicians do art for themselves. They don’t have to worry about pleasing an audience or the pressures of the industry. They can feed their creativity with art.”

A prime example of the multitalented is Jimmy Crosthwait — puppeteer, washboard musician, percussionist, sculptor, et al. His piece at the Dixon is a towering spire titled Tambourine Totem. “He oozes creativity,” says Church.

Singer-songwriter Cory Branan offers an inside look at his songwriting process with intricate sketches and writing in pages torn from a journal. Also mixed “In the Mix” is an acrylic painting by singer Val Joyner, a comic strip drawn by Lucero frontman Ben Nichols, drawings by Susan Marshall, plus works by musicians Jim and Luther Dickinson, Gerard Harris, Reba and Wayne Russell, Greg Roberson, Lamar Sorrento, and Jeannie Tomlinson.

“Tomlinson was bass player for the Marilyns, an all-girl punk band that used to play at the Antenna,” says Church. “It’s really interesting to see [her working] with forged metal, which requires power and an edge, like her music.”

William Eggleston, “the father of color photography,” may have the most rock-and-roll past of all this exhibit’s artists combined. Included are Eggleston photos of Jody Stephens on a Big Star album from 1974. The late Jack Robinson is another renown photographer whose work is represented. On loan from the Jack Robinson Gallery are images of ’60 icons, such as Tina and Ike Turner.

Musical mainstay Sid Selvidge’s photos capture his life — on stage, back stage, and on tour with blues greats.

Graphic artists often go unrecogonized for their work — logos, cover art, and posters. “In the Mix” presents the work of local graphic artists, such as a three-color serigraph created by Michael Carpenter for the band Lucero and the cover art for Rob Jungklas’ Arkadelphia CD, which won Brooke Barnett a Memphis Advertising Federation “Addy” award in 2002.

Portrait of Lucille, a painting by Ellis Chap-pell, is a Gibson guitar shrouded in neon and inspired by B.B. King’s affectionately named guitar.

In conjunction with the exhibit and the Dixon’s Third Thursdays: Art After Dark music series, blues artist Richard Johnston will perform on the lawn on June 17th. There will be a cash bar and a free fajita/quesadilla bar. n

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

The Hold Steady

Almost Killed Me
 (Frenchkiss)

On their 2000 swan song Fiestas + Fiascos, Minneapolis’ Lifter Puller developed into perhaps the most distinctive guitar-bass-drums indie-rock band on the planet. Musically, it was car-factory guitar clatter hopped up on funk and hip-hop, and it presented an illusion of spontaneity, as if the band were riffing, jazzlike, off lead “singer” Craig Finn’s sometimes deal-breaking Lenny Bruce-like rants. The theme was the grimy underside of nightlife — backroom drug deals, alcohol-fueled house parties, random sex –and Finn’s protagonist navigated it all like Philip Marlowe through the hazy decadence of The Big Sleep. It was the masterpiece that nobody heard, and the band’s cult seemed to peak about six months after they broke up.

Now based in Brooklyn, Finn (along with Lifter Puller bassist Tad Kubler, now on lead guitar) is back with a new band, the Hold Steady, which puts a more conventional twist on the Lifter Puller formula. Where Lifter Puller’s sound was sui generis, the Hold Steady is a very self-conscious commentary on bar-band rock, a successful attempt to unite the classic-rock sounds of the mid-’70s with the indie-rock of the early ’90s. (When I spoke to Finn at Austin’s South By Southwest festival this year, he revealed that his favorite band is the Grifters.)

There are a lot of similarities between Fiestas + Fiascos and Almost Killed Me. Both are driven by Finn’s torrent of words, which again take the form of stream-of-consciousness observations on seedy nightlife scenes, here mixed with random declarations (“The ’80s almost killed me/Let’s not recall them quite so fondly,” he admonishes his colleagues on the NYC rock scene) and pop-culture name-chains (one set of lyrics leaps drunkenly from Neil Schon to Nina Simone to Andre Cymone). And Almost Killed Me features the recurring characters and lyrical motifs that marked Fiestas, though not nearly to the same extreme. The songs and setting here are more self-contained.

The biggest difference is the music and the way the music influences the lyrical content (or vice versa?). “Barfruit Blues” makes a bid to be the best song ever about playing in a bar band. Early on, Finn runs into a lifetime scenester who remembers him from the Lifter Puller days. The exchange goes like this: “She said, ‘It’s good to see you back in a bar band, baby’/I said, ‘It’s great to see you’re still in the bars.'” By the end of the song, the band is on stage confronting its nightly moment of truth: “This was supposed to be a party/Half the crowd is calling out for ‘Born To Run’/The other half is calling out for ‘Born To Lose’/Baby, we were born to choose/We got the last-call bar-band really-really-really big decision blues/We were born to bruise.”

The bar-band theme allows Finn & Co. to indulge the Springsteen fixation that popped up on Fiestas + Fiascos (most notably in “Candy’s Room,” so named because it borrowed the drum intro from the Boss song of the same title). You can hear this on the Clarence Clemons sax breaks of the empathetic “Hostile, Mass” and on the “Thunder Road” mood of the nostalgic “Certain Songs,” the tale of a girl “neck deep in the steamy dreams of the guys along the harbor bars.”

But this rock-and-roll romanticism comes through most on the anthemic “Most People Are DJs” (a slogan-of-the-decade candidate, surely). At the end of the song, emotion and momentum building, Finn looks out on the “kids” in the audience, and they multiply in his mind: “A thousand kids will fall in love in all these clubs tonight/A thousand other kids will end up gushing blood tonight/Two thousand kids won’t get too much sleep tonight/Two thousand kids, they still feel pretty sweet tonight/Yeah, and I still feel pretty sweet.” And as he reaches that affirmation, Kubler clips him off with a classic-rock guitar solo that lifts off at the 3:24 mark and goes on for two-and-a-half minutes.

The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me opens with a song called “Positive Jam,” where Finn offers a Cliffs Notes history of the U.S. (“In the ’90s we were wired and well-connected/Put it all down on technology and lost everything we invested”) that culminates with a personal confession: “I got bored when I didn’t have a band/So I started a band/We’re gonna start it with a positive jam.” Well, “Most People Are DJs” is the real positive jam –and all the evi

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Editorial

This week brings the 2004 FedEx St. Jude Classic, the latest version of a PGA tournament that has existed in Memphis since 1958 and has showcased, and even inaugurated, some notable careers. Ben Hogan has played here and Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer, and … well, you name them.

Unfortunately, the list does not include — and never has — the one name that symbolizes big-time golf these days: Tiger Woods. Though Woods does not dominate the game as he once did, he is still its premier player — arguably the best of all time — and its biggest draw by far. At a time when, to put it candidly, the FESJC no longer features the very top tier of PGA tour contenders, Woods is the one marquee player whose presence could draw the others in.

Tournament director Phil Cannon performs prodigiously to attract a quality field. Among the factors that have made his task more difficult over the years are those of the calendar (often the tournament has been scheduled for mid- to late summer in Memphis’ customarily blistering heat) and the perception that the Southwind tournament site isn’t among the tour’s most challenging. But the prize money for the FESJC — $846,000 for the winner; $4.7 million in all — is right up there, and all the tournament requires to claim its place on the leaderboards is a boost of the sort that an appearance by Woods could provide.

This might be a job for Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, who played a significant role in attracting to Memphis the 2002 “Fight of the Century” between then heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis and the number one challenger Mike Tyson. Perhaps the mayor should make it a personal mission to pitch golf’s leading player, who, whether he chooses such a role or not, symbolizes diversity in a sport that was once only a game for white “gentlemen.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Saying We’re Sorry

During the final few days of the 103rd General Assembly session, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill of conscience — righting wrongs levied on claimants who have been falsely imprisoned in state correctional facilities.

The bill, named for Shelby County resident Clark McMillan, pays innocent claimants up to $100 for each day served in jail. McMillan received national attention in 2002 when DNA evidence and the help of The Innocence Project exonerated him of the 1979 rape and robbery of a 16-year-old girl in Overton Park. At that time, McMillan had already served 22 and a half years of his 119-year sentence. Throughout his jail time, he steadfastly maintained his innocence even though he had been identified as the perpetrator by the girl and her boyfriend. This lengthy imprisonment was the second longest time served by any of the 140 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the country.

Senator Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) and Representative John DeBerry (D-Memphis) co-sponsored the bill, which allows the Board of Claims to award payments, not exceeding $1 million, in monthly installments to wronged individuals or their surviving spouses and children.

“This was a case of a person who does not, or will probably not, make a political endorsement to a particular legislator, but this is a bill of conscience,” said Cohen. “Unfortunately, the [state legislature] does not do enough of that, but I’m glad we were able to do it.”

McMillan became the first Tennessee claimant to qualify for the post-conviction DNA testing under a separate bill authored by Cohen and enacted in 2001. To qualify for the repayment, claimants must undergo a Board of Claims hearing determining them by “clear and convincing evidence” to be innocent. Claimants may also choose to receive a lump sum amount or establish an annuity.

“He had been out [of jail] for a couple of years now and no one was chomping at the bit to do anything for this man,” said DeBerry, who met McMillan while working on the legislation.

During McMillan’s time in jail he suffered a spinal injury, leaving him in severe pain. His sister, father, and grandmother died during that time, and his mother, attempting to fund his defense, lost her home.

Cohen said McMillan is expected to receive about $821,000 for his time served. As part of the legislation, no attorney will receive compensation for working on the case. n

E-mail: jdavis@memphisflyer.com

Categories
News The Fly-By

OH CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN

LifeDesign magazine, a Mid-South publication that, according to its ads, targets 30-something women with college educations and an income in excess of $40,000, recently published a story titled Entertaining your Guests: Viva Las Memphis! The article is a handy-dandy rundown of Memphis most obvious attractions: The zoo, the Redbirds, Beale Street, and so on. But one assemblage of words (just a verb shy of an actual sentence) caught the Fly s attention: The Rendezvous for ribs, Chez Philippe for a culinary dream (yes, Jose still sets the standard here), Automatic Slim s for N.Y. style and great drinks, Erika s for a German lunch, Cafe Samovar for a Russian treat, or catch a sunset over a beer at Captain Bilbo s. Perhaps LifeDesign should market itself to college-educated, 30-something women who make in excess of $40-G and who have access to a time machine, since the legendary Captain Bilbo s closed its doors sometime in the mid-1990s.

Plante: How It Looks